Cable Porn Problem: Nobody’s Paying for It

As people have increasingly taken to watching their porn online for free, satellite and cable companies like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and DirecTV have been feeling the blow in their video-on-demand (VOD) column. Last week, a few of them took the unprecedented step of discussing their flaccid showing frankly.

DirecTV cited “lower adult buys” as a reason for its pay-per-view revenue shrinkage. And in his earning’s call, Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt attributed the company’s inability to keep it up directly to porn’s online tumescence. “There’s been fairly steady trends over some time period now for adult to go down largely because there’s that kind of material available on the Internet for free,” he admitted.

The withering adult category was responsible for more than a third of the company’s $14 million drop in VOD revenue. (Regular movie rentals are down too, and there were no big pay-per-view sporting events in the last quarter.) Reached on the phone to discuss VOD’s droop, a Time Warner rep demurred. “I think we put all the color we’re prepared to put into that on the earnings call,” he said.

As people have increasingly taken to watching their porn online for free, satellite and cable companies like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and DirecTV have been feeling the blow in their video-on-demand (VOD) column. Last week, a few of them took the unprecedented step of discussing their flaccid showing frankly.

DirecTV cited “lower adult buys” as a reason for its pay-per-view revenue shrinkage. And in his earning’s call, Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt attributed the company’s inability to keep it up directly to porn’s online tumescence. “There’s been fairly steady trends over some time period now for adult to go down largely because there’s that kind of material available on the Internet for free,” he admitted.

The withering adult category was responsible for more than a third of the company’s $14 million drop in VOD revenue. (Regular movie rentals are down too, and there were no big pay-per-view sporting events in the last quarter.) Reached on the phone to discuss VOD’s droop, a Time Warner rep demurred. “I think we put all the color we’re prepared to put into that on the earnings call,” he said.